'The' big cyber-hangout for Mormons and their critics these days is at FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research. 'The' place used to be ZLMB, but nearly all of the apologists fled the scene, citing their frustration with constant attacks from Mormonism's critics. FAIR's discussion board was deliberately designed as a safe haven for apologists, particularly for its 'star' posters, BYU professors Dan Peterson and Bill Hamblin. The 'stars' get VIP treatment in the way the threads they post to are moderated. Often, when a discussion gets heated, the 'star' has more leeway to say what he wants in his post. The person on the other end of the argument gets especially close scrutiny.
Knowing as I do the excesses of some Mormon critics, I can understand how ZLMB imploded. Frankly, there are a number of critics, particularly of the Evangelical persuasion, whose facile criticisms of Mormonism could just as easily be turned back on Christianity. The problem is, Evangelicals never seem to want to admit that problem. Enter the secular critics of Mormonism. These critics often have no religious belief to be hypocritical about. Still some of them can be immoderate and insulting in their approach, and they are not immune from indulging in empty diatribes against Mormonism.
Still, it is from the secular camp that some of the best material comes. The secularists, instead of aiming to prove that Mormonism is not Christian (a pointless waste of time), often look to demonstrate that the Mormonism of the past is not as the Church of the present represents it. To a degree one can claim that this fact goes without saying. Churches change over time, and they move as society moves, responding to new challenges in an ever-morphing environment. It is the application of secular scholarly methods to the material, however, that is guaranteed to bring the most new insights. Take the new Bushman biography, for example. Without the insights of a Quinn, who used secular methods in spite of his believer status, I doubt Bushman would have ever included much of the material on Joseph's early years of religious experience. Men like Quinn and Vogel made such research and writing a must for even the more conservative Bushman.
When scholarly controversy can lead to such great benefits, it is perhaps ironic that both the LDS Church and its self-appointed defenders are intent upon killing the debate. Without disagreement and challenges, we would be mired in outdated books about LDS topics. The critics have done more to advance LDS scholarship on LDS topics than any other force. Without critics, we might be left with only masturbatory panegyric on how wonderful Joseph Smith was, etc. It was the hard work of the Tanners that re-historicized the revelations of the D&C. I generally don't even like the Tanners, but I have to admit that they have been really good for Mormon scholarship.
It is more than a shame, then, that FAIR is so unfair in its moderating. It has been my belief for some time that the rhetoric of FARMS reviews was damaging to the Church for the same reason that missionaries claim that anti-Mormonism is a boon for missionary work. If you have to play nasty, there must be something wrong with your position. At the very least it will appear that something is wrong. Grant Palmer was ridiculed by Davis Bitton for claiming to be an 'insider'. Yes, clearly Grant did not understand that the only insiders in the Church are the fifteen men who sit at the pinnacle of its leadership structure. Can we honestly blame Grant, as a lifelong professional employee of the LDS Church, for claiming he was an insider?
FAIR is the 30-second commercial to FARMS Review's sitcom. FAIR's discussion board is superior inasmuch as it allows some response to the apologists. The forum, however, is so tightly controlled that responses to apologists are curbed before they get dangerous. The 'stars' come out to shine by ridiculing the critics (both critics of the Church and critics of apologists like me) and then they hide behind a suitable moderator avatar to fix the odds. Dunamis is at least 3 or 4 different people, who have variously praised and pilloried my contributions to the discussion, depending on who had the helm at that moment. So FAIR moderating looks schizophrenic at best and like some bizarre form of rhetorical terrorism at its worst.
My days at FAIR have probably reached their end. I was put on their queue (a poster on the queue will have their posts reviewed and (dis)approved) for using the expression 'cutesy-poo' in an exchange with Dan Peterson on the Hedgeses' farcical review of Vogel's Smith biography. I note with some frustration that Dan Peterson had earlier used that phrase to dismiss one of my posts on another thread. But, as I was reminded, I had earlier used the forbidden phrase 'rhetorical diarrhea' to describe one of Brant Gardner's encyclopedic posts. Clearly I have a potty mouth and must be disciplined. When the quality of moderating at a board is this bad, they deserve the vapid content they get. Their vapid content is exactly what I described earlier: auto-erotic panegyric. Any kooky theory that supports the 'right' conclusion gets accolades.
